VIA's new 'sexy, sleek' Prímo buses get ready to roll on Fredericksburg

Because of their 60-foot length, VIA’s new Prímo buses are hinged in the middle to allow for easier cornering. The vehicles run on compressed natural gas.

Photo By Michael Miller/For the Express-News

VIA representative Sabrina Polanco (right) explains the attributes of a new Prímo bus to Claudia Ruibal and John Ruibal. The vehicles are to go into service on Fredericksburg Road on Dec. 17.

Photo By Michael Miller/For the Express-News

A VIA Prímo bus is shown off during a "Better Block" event at 300 W. Commerce on Saturday, Dec. 8, 2012. The Prímo is meant to help riders get to their destinations faster.

Photo By Billy Calzada/San Antonio Express-News

A new articulated bus makes a turn as its driver trains on Nov. 20, 2012. VIA Metropolitan Transit will launch its new bus rapid transit service, VIA Primo, soon. The service will consist of 60 feet, articulated buses, compared to the 40 feet buses on most VIA routes. The bike rack in foreground holds three bicycles.

Photo By Billy Calzada/San Antonio Express-News

The bellows that allow flexibility in turns are prominent in the cabin of the new buses to be used by VIA Primo.

Photo By Billy Calzada/San Antonio Express-News

New VIA Primo articulated buses circle a parking area as drivers train on Nov. 20, 2012. The buses, which cost about $850,000 each, will provide rapid transit riders with free wifi internet connectivity.

Photo By Billy Calzada/San Antonio Express-News

New VIA Primo articulated buses circle a parking area as drivers train on Nov. 20, 2012. The buses, which cost about $850,000 each, will provide rapid transit riders with free wifi internet connectivity.

Photo By Billy Calzada/San Antonio Express-News

VIA Metropolitan Transit's new articulated buses to be used in the VIA Primo rapid transit program are equipped with free wifi internet technology.

Photo By Billy Calzada/San Antonio Express-News

Gerald Pellock trains on a new VIA Primo articulated bus on Nov. 20, 2012. The new buses are 60-feet long, 20 feet longer than other buses.

Photo By Billy Calzada/San Antonio Express-News

The new VIA Primo rapid transit buses are recognizable by the bellows that allow them flexibility in turns.

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On an overcast weekday morning, Rogelio Barrientos held on to his cane and stood at a crowded bus stop on Fredericksburg Road, waiting to catch the number 92 bus.

Like many of the 12,000 people who take public transit along this corridor every day, Barrientos was headed to the Medical Center, this time for one of his regular appointments at the Audie Murphy VA Hospital.

The bus stop, at Mary Louise Drive, looked like it had been visited by many travelers over the years. Two phone booths installed beside it were covered in graffiti. The benches were mismatched and old.

Then a bus zoomed past. It was nothing like the vehicles that make up most of the VIA fleet. This bus was silver, tall and so long that it bends in the middle.

Say hello to VIA Prímo, the big service addition to VIA.

“I like 'em,” Barrientos, 74, said after one of the 60-foot-long Prímo training buses drove by, “because they're brand new.”

On Dec. 17, VIA launches VIA Prímo, its first bus rapid transit line and arguably the transit agency's most ambitious new service in the past decade.

Sometimes billed as light rail on wheels because of its sleek look, BRT will offer service every 10 minutes during the week, rather than the 15-minute frequency on some current Fredericksburg routes.

There are other perks: free Wifi, level boarding so passengers can get on faster and bicycle racks inside, not outside, the bus.

But the real question for VIA is, will Prímo attract significantly more riders, particularly ones new to public transit?

The question has weighed heavily more recently, with a revived debate over VIA's planned streetcar. Some rail opponents say VIA doesn't need streetcars in addition to buses.

While VIA expects the majority of the Prímo ridership will consist of current passengers like Barrientos, it hopes to attract new riders who choose to use the bus but don't necessarily have to take it, such as people who live downtown but work at the Medical Center, said Arturo Herrera, Jr., VIA's strategic planner overseeing the BRT project.

The Fredericksburg corridor experiences some of the highest ridership in the VIA system. Those numbers could increase by 5 percent to 7 percent after Prímo's initial six to eight months of operation, said VIA Chief Development Officer Brian Buchanan.

BRT advocates, including Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, believe getting more people to ride transit is crucial both to helping revive the inner city but also for long-term reasons, like helping the environment.

“It's a step forward in public transit,” Wolff said. “A major step forward.”

A Prímo ticket costs $1.10, the same as a regular bus fare, though VIA is considering a fare increase of a dime for all buses.

The frequency will change to 15 minutes in the early evenings, sometime between 5:30 p.m. and 6 p.m., during the week and most of the day on weekends; at night, Prímo buses will run about every 30 minutes.

The service will also feature new stops, called stations, that are farther apart than most existing bus stops to ensure a faster trip.

One of those stations was under construction across the street from where Barrientos waited for his bus. It was white and covered with a large overhang offering more shelter than most stops.

Prímo will connect downtown to the Medical Center, replacing the 91 and 92 routes. Other routes on the Fredericksburg corridor will continue service, but they won't stop at the new bus stations, which are exclusive to the 16 Prímo buses.

Other differences between Primo and regular bus service include:

• The Prímo fleet also will have traffic signal priority, a wireless technology that allows the buses to pass through traffic lights along the Fredericksburg and Medical Drive corridors faster. While the lights won't automatically change to green when a bus approaches, the system will switch to green as quickly as possible or hold a green light longer.

• A feature that allows wheelchair users to strap themselves into a space on the bus, rather than requiring the bus operator to help (the Prímo bus operators can still assist any wheelchair users if they need it).

• The BRT stations on Fredericksburg and at the Medical Center will be outfitted with real-time messaging signs that tell passengers exactly when the next bus will arrive. TV screens inside Prímo buses will be similar.

• Prímo buses can seat 47 people and comfortably hold 60 to 70 passengers total with standing room. Regular buses seat 37 and can ferry 45 to 50 passengers.

VIA is also aggressively marketing the new service. There are newspaper and television ads, and mailers that include two free bus tickets. One billboard reads: “Prepare to be amazed.”

A long time coming

But if the Prímo campaign started in earnest this fall, the service itself has been a long time coming. Rapid bus was in the works, at least conceptually, since shortly after 2000. That year, voters rejected a sales tax increase that would have funded construction of a light-rail system.

Rapid bus, which had grown in popularity across the country starting in the 1990s, became a viable option for VIA after the light-rail election, said Tim Tuggey, VIA board chairman from 2004 to 2008.

“The (2000) vote, I think, reasonably caused VIA to look back at other alternatives,” he said.

Prímo and all related amenities cost $66.7 million to get up and running.

Most VIA buses run on diesel fuel, though some in the regular fleet use compressed natural gas. All the Prímo buses will run on CNG, a cheaper fuel, VIA spokeswoman Priscilla Ingle said. However, the purchase price is higher for the 60-foot-long Prímos — $878,000. It's $500,000 for other CNG buses that are the standard 40 feet.

Twelve years after light rail's defeat, VIA is moving forward with another rail plan, a five-mile downtown streetcar system. It never went before voters: VIA, Bexar County and the city cobbled together the money.

Like light rail, streetcars have inspired pushback from rail opponents, who call the project a waste of money. There have been threats of lawsuits and calls for VIA to put it to a vote.

Even in the best-case scenario, streetcars won't come on line until 2016 or 2017.

That makes Prímo the first mobility piece of VIA's fledgling plan to create a system in which riders can access a variety of connected transit options.

BRT and streetcar can work together, Buchanan said. Streetcar is an urban circulator, he said, while rapid bus moves a lot of people through a longer corridor but stops at fewer places.

The Prímo buses will stop at VIA's new West Side Multimodal Center, in a former train depot on Medina Street before looping through downtown. VIA hopes that eventually, streetcars also will pick up and drop off passengers at the station.

At first, the center will be just a regular bus stop. In the next three months, it will have some customer services, a new transit police headquarters and restrooms.

The project's second phase, a transit plaza, won't open until 2015. Wolff surmises VIA won't see the true scope of ridership gains on BRT until the entire system opens.

But there will be other on-the-ground changes starting next week.

The day the rapid bus service launches also marks the grand opening of VIA's new South Texas Medical Center Transit Center, at Babcock Road and Medical Drive, replacing the one on Merton Minter, less than a mile away. Unlike the old center, which had no parking, the new one will have 123 parking spaces, Herrera said.

VIA also will begin a shuttle service, called Medlink, which will circulate throughout the Medical Center and cost the same as a regular bus fare.

Previously, only a few of the hospitals provided limited shuttle service, but there was no real circulator for the Medical Center, said Jim Reed, president of the San Antonio Medical Foundation.

The shuttle will circulate every 30 minutes; VIA hopes that eventually will increase to a 20-minute frequency.

There were 5.5 million patient visits in the Medical Center last year. Nearly 50,000 people work there, Reed said. So traffic congestion is a major problem, one he hopes Prímo will address.

“We're hopeful that the dressing up of the buses and the dressing up of the terminal,” Reed said, “that we can get rides that aren't riders of last resort.”

A new kind of bus

The name of the game in bus rapid transit is convenience.

In addition, VIA officials want the experience of riding the Prímo to feel different than riding the traditional bus.

Jason Gil, 37, regularly rides the 92 before hopping onto the 93 Express to get to class at UTSA. His wife uses their car; he's never had a driver's license.

He plans to buy a bicycle, and he likes the idea of taking it onto Prímo rather than mount it on the front of the bus.

Plus, the Prímos look great — “they have a kind of sexy, sleek design to them,” Gil said, compared to the “clunky, boxy, noisy” regular bus which, he adds, are late about half the time.

But he wonders whether Prímo will live up to expectations. He's lived in Seattle and visited Berlin several times. Their transit systems impressed him, so how well can Prímo compete?

“I'm interested to see how efficient the (Prímo) bus system is going to be based on VIA's claim,” Gil said.

Buses can carry a “certain stigma,” said Jeff Hiott, senior program manager for bus technical services at the American Public Transportation Association. So transit agencies often take the opportunity to rebrand the BRT buses when they launch the service.

Perception “is the big factor in it,” Hiott said. Even if the travel time isn't that much faster than normal service, the look and feel of the bus can convince passengers service has improved.

VIA officials eventually plan to expand the service, possibly adding rapid bus on Southwest Military Drive, which could connect to a planned transit center in the Brooks City-Base area. An extension to Leon Valley should launch this time next year.

In the end, the surest sign of Prímo's success will be how many people use it. All the bells and the whistles may not matter more than the bottom line for VIA riders like Enrique Guerra, 35, who occasionally takes the number 91 bus on Fredericksburg to get to his job. He doesn't care which bus he rides.

“My theory is whatever bus is going to get me there quicker,” Guerra said, “that's what I'm going to take.”